Protest against "naked scanners"

Protest against "naked scanners"

Thursday, December 31, 2010

The use of body scanners at the airport only partially helps to avoid attacks, but it means a significant degradation of the privacy of airline passengers. This enables the digital civil rights organization Bits of Freedom in an open letter to Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin (CDA).

Ot van Daalen Director of Bits of Freedom writes in the letter that all passengers 'digitally undressed', which he is a breach of privacy and bodily integrity. Van Daalen wonders aloud whether it can prevent one hundred percent security staff pictures of nude images, for example from Dutch or children.

Van Daalen points out that the scanners are not flawless. Schiphol can not guarantee that the Nigerian on Christmas Day trying to blow up a plane with a body scan time was packed. Terrorists have reportedly been practicing on the passing of the scanners.

The use of the scanners also involves high costs involved, and possibly longer waiting times. Also the health effects are still not fixed. According to Van Daalen the benefits are not in proportion to the disadvantages. He asks Hirsch Ballin also going back on his decision to the body scan compulsory for all passengers to the United States.

The government, according to Van Daalen better investigate why the existing security measures have failed.

“How is freedom measured, in individuals as in nations? By the resistance which has to be overcome, by the effort it costs to stay aloft. One would have to seek the highest type of free man where the greatest resistance is constantly being overcome: five steps from tyranny, near the threshold of the danger of servitude.”